In the related art, an image forming apparatus automatically determines whether or not a toner cartridge which is mounted in the image forming apparatus is a genuine product. The image forming apparatus reads out information indicating whether or not to be a genuine product from the toner cartridge, and determines whether or not the toner cartridge is the genuine product. If the toner cartridge is not the genuine product, the image forming apparatus adopts a technology for prohibiting an image forming operation or for displaying a warning.
However, the image forming apparatus determines whether or not the toner cartridge is the genuine product every time at the time of a startup or a sleep return. Therefore, the image forming apparatus asks for a long time up to a paper passing start from after the startup or the sleep return.